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Compulsive Acts

As bullying has moved from the school bus to the social network, new challenges, including a worrisome link with suicidality, have emerged. A non-sensationalistic, evidence-based approach is needed to confront what has become a clear public health problem.

Can an intervention inspired by, or at least using the same tools as, addictive video games be therapeutic? Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy, or VRET, is here, and it has more than a few things in common with World of Warcraft.

The medical and psychiatric profession, like the fashion industry, is prone to producing fashion victims. Diagnoses come and go, sometimes more as a function of taste than a research-proven change in their true frequency. Diagnostic guides like the DSM have more in common with Vogue than is comfortable to admit.

The brutal "state of nature" feared by philosophers is reborn online. The real life consequences are calling for desperate measures that will curtail anonymity, freedom and much of what we like about the Internet.

Body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD, is a serious appearance-based affliction. BDD sufferers feel unbearably ugly, and little you can say can change their minds. However, when BDD affects a patient's loved one, as when a patient starts believing that a child or spouse is unbearably ugly, the diagnosis takes on a new meaning and new toll.

We live by a new and blurred calendar. One consequence of the digital revolution is the explosive growth in productivity. Another is that we are now constantly on call for work. The lines that separated weekends from weekdays, “eight to five” from the rest of the twenty-four-hour cycle, and workdays from holidays or vacations now feel antiquated.

We trusted him with nothing less than our brains, allowing ourselves to become physiologically hooked on one genius product after another. What to do now when the "fix" starts yielding less and less of a "high"? Where do we flock? Who do we ping? What do we download?

Do you worry that personal information that your doctor types into your electronic medical chart will have the same level of privacy as your Facebook status updates? Privacy is passe, but how about for your health record?

Brain imaging studies are showing that a form of therapy known as cognitive behavioral therapy produces changes in the brain that are similar to what Prozac-like drugs do. What does this tell us about how psychotherapy works?